Abstract
The study was designed to quantity the hypotonia of children with Down syndrome using our conventional method of hypotonia measurement.
The subjects with Down syndrome consisted of 84 children (36 boys and 48 girls) who were diagnosed as the regular 21 trisomy type by chromosomal analysis and the normal control subjects consisted of 124 children (65 boys and 59 girls). The age range of Down syndrome group was from 3 months to 7 years of age, and the age range of normal controls was from 1 months to 6 years of age.
The hip flexion-knee extention, ankle dorsiflexion and wrist extension were measured by zero-starting position method. For the evaluation of the scarf sign, the range of motion (ROM) of elbow flexion was measured.
The degree of hypotonia in Down syndrome at hip flexion-knee extension, ankle dorsiflexion, wrist extension and scarf sign testing were significantly larger than those of normal control group. These signs of hypotonia in Down syndrome decreased as the age increased. There was no difference between males and females with Down syndrome.
The correlation coefficients between the scarf sign and wrist dorsiflexion, between hip flexion and ankle dorsiflexion, between wrist extension and ankle dorsiflexion and between scarf sign and hip flexion were 0.71, 0.83, 0.81 and 0.75 respectively. The high correlation between each measurement suggests the nature of generalized hypotonia in Down syndrome.
